Tobacco Crust

Hymenochaete tabacina

On fallen deciduous, rarely coniferous branches and trunks. Spring, summer, autumn (winter).

Annual, biennial. Fruiting bodies spreading, at first round, later several fuse together to form a large garland of fruiting bodies up to 1 m long and more, with small, fragile, yellowish-brown caps detached from the substrate, their surface wrinkled and zoned. Hymenophore smooth, radially cracked, with a pink tinge, later tobacco-coloured. Grows on dead, fallen branches and snags of hazel and willow, less often of other deciduous trees. A good forest sanitiser. Very common. The similar Hymenochaete rubiginosa (H. rubiginosa) is rarer; its fruiting bodies are perennial. Both these Hymenochaete species are active saprotrophs that quickly break down fallen branches.